It was hard to believe what they saw. The computers were all brand-new warp-speed, superhighway monsters from Toshiba. There were three of them, all placed neatly on a wooden desk pushed against the rusting hull. Also on the desk was an external 28.8 modem with a line-conditioner. There were hundreds of utility disks in disk holders on a free-standing wooden bookshelf. Malavida moved to them and started rummaging through the index tabs.
"He's got it all… various flavors of UNIX, crackers for UNIX, VMS, Novell, 'elite' addresses on the Internet, CERT security advries… He's fully locked and loaded." Malavida glanced at Lockwood, who was moving toward a coffin-sized freezer. He tried to open it, but it was locked. Over the freezer, taped to the wall, was a large blowup of an old photograph.
"The fuck is this?" Lockwood said. It was a picture of a woman with dishwater-blond hair. She was in a bathing suit, standing next to a tree. There was a portable pool out of focus behind her. The woman was holding a cat and smiling into the camera lens. Her body was muscular but trim; she had even rows of teeth and iridescent eyes. But her smile was mean, mixed with a defiant glare. The thing that was strange about the photograph was that certain parts of her body had been transected with a dark Magic Marker. The legs and arms were numbered and dated; so were both feet and the torso. Lockwood took a mental picture of the photograph.
Then the walkie-talkie erupted with two frantic blasts of static and went dead.
Lockwood looked at Malavida and they took off, climbing quickly up the stairs, running along the interior gangway, and exploding out of the barge into the evening darkness. The sound of night birds greeted them as they ran down the ramp. Malavida looked where they had left Karen, but she was gone. Then they heard her scream.
Lockwood and Malavida bolted in that direction. They were moving through a wall of heavy brush, crashing through thickets, tearing their skin on brambles and thorns. They plunged on blindly, Lockwood leading the way… until the ripping thorns became too painful.** then Malavida pushed past him and took the lead.
Finally, they broke out into a clearing and saw a blue house some distance away. Lockwood, gun in hand, moved in a low crouch toward the house, Malavida right beside him.
The sun was down but the horizon was a soft pink, lit from the afterglow in the western sky. They got to the front door. Lockwood found it ajar, kicked it wide, and ducked inside.
A huge man lumbered out of the kitchen. He was dressed only in baggy shorts. His pale white body had no definition. He had a cellphone in a holster on his belt. His bald head gleamed in the pink light coming through the living room window. Lockwood guessed he was almost seven feet tall. Heather had been right-he had no eyebrows, no hair on him at all.
"Get out of my house," he said, his voice was tight and high. "Where is she?"
"Get out…" he repeated.
Lockwood brought the gun up. "I'm John Lockwood, U. S. Customs. Put your hands up and get on your knees, facing the wall. Do it now, you cocksucker, or I'll blow you to fucking pieces!" It was all Lockwood could do to keep from shooting the man who had mutilated Claire.
Then the huge man bolted out a back door. Lockwood pulled the trigger and the gun jumped in his hand. A piece of the doorway splintered. The shot missed and the man was gone… out into the backyard.
"Find Karen, I'll go after him!" Lockwood commanded and took off after the seven-foot apparition.
When he got outside, Lockwood could barely see him. Then his eyes finally picked him out in the dim light. He appeared to be galloping, favoring his right side, running for all he was worth through the weeds. Lockwood covered the ground more easily and athletically, but the man was now out of sight in the reeds at the water's edge. Then Lockwood heard an engine start. He saw the path the man had taken and ran down it. When he came out at the water's edge, he saw the second tributary. An air-boat was skimming across the marshy lowland, cutting down swampy undergrowth as it went, moving like the wind, the doughy seven-foot bald psychopath at the helm. Lockwood crouched and fired twice but the airboat was picking up speed. He knew the old army.45 automatic was barely accurate at ten yards, let alone a hundred. The shots crashed out into the dense foliage, snapping leaves and branches, before whistling away uselessly into the night.
The Rat was flying, the air drying his teeth. He grabbed the cell-phone on his belt. Holding the wheel of the speeding boat with one hand, he dialed a number. Deep in the basement of the house he had just left, a phone rang…
Malavida had found Karen in the kitchen. She was dazed and almost unconscious. He picked her up and carried her out of the house. When he laid her on the grass, her eyes opened.
"Thanks," she finally said.
Then Malavida heard the distant sound of the phone ringing. He looked down at her. "It's him," he said. "I wanna talk to him." He started back into the house.
"No… don't…" Karen said. Malavida hesitated for a moment, unsure; the phone kept ringing; then he bolted for it, running up the steps and into the house.
He didn't get far. He was two steps inside the living room when the explosion took him. It started in the basement and erupted up through the floorboards of the old house, throwing concrete and plaster into the air like papier-mache.
The concussion rocked Lockwood, who was forty yards away, and caused him to go down on one knee.
Malavida Chacone was blown backward out the front door. He landed ten feet from Karen, his body broken and bleeding. Karen screamed in terror as she looked over at him… and the remnants of the house rained down around them.
Chapter 24
THE BURDEN
After the deafening sound of the explosion, the swamp went dead silent. Thousands of keening insects paused to listen as pieces of Leonard Land's house rained down on the wet ground or splashed into the swamp water hundreds of yards from where the house had been.
Lockwood was already back up and moving before the last pieces hit the ground. He could see Karen and Malavida not far away and he ran toward them. A huge piece of tin roof fell not three feet from him and stuck, edge down, into the wet ground, quivering like a thrown knife. The air was pungent with the smell of dust and cordite. By the time he got to them he could see that Malavida Chacone was critically, if not fatally, injured. He was bleeding from half a dozen serious wounds, but the thing that worried Lockwood most was the weirdly unnatural position of his broken body. Wide-eyed, Karen was staring down at Malavida when Lockwood arrived. Her eyes had the glassy look of desperation. "Oh, my God… I think he's dead," she said, her voice eerie as it pierced the unnatural silence.
"Go see if that truck over there has a key in it," he commanded. "If not, check under the bumpers for a hide-a-key box." He knew he could hot-wire it if necessary, but he wanted to get her in motion. If there was a chance to save Malavida, he'd need her help.
"We can't move him," she said, her voice shrill. "He could have spinal injuries… He could have internal bleeding. It could kill him."
"He's gonna be dead if we don't." He took a breath and talked to her in a calm voice. "There's nothing here we can use to help him. He's gonna pump himself dry if we don't move him. Do what I said. The truck will get us to a hospital faster than that boat. We move him or lose him."
She hesitated for a moment and then got up off her hands and knees and ran, stumbling toward the vehicle that was parked in the yard. The pickup was sprinkled with dirt and small chunks of the house. She opened the door and looked in at the ignition. There were no keys. Then, as Lockwood had instructed, she climbed under the bumper. Sliding on her back she felt around, looking for a hide-a-key box… and under the back bumper, she found one. Karen squirmed out with the box in hand, removed the ignition key, and started the engine.
Lockwood pulled Malavida's light windbreaker off to get a better look at his wounds. He was having trouble finding Malavida's pulse. He put his fingers on the carotid artery in his neck but could feel nothing. Lockwood's hands were shaking so he couldn't be absolutely sure.
He put
his ear to Malavida's chest. He thought he could hear a heartbeat, faint and thready. Then he felt light, raspy breathing on the side of his face. He looked up as Karen pulled the old pickup in beside them. "Be tough," he said softly to Malavida. Then he scooped his arms under the Chicano cracker and, using all of his strength, he struggled to his knees, then finally stood and moved on unsteady legs to the truck. He knew that if there was a serious spinal injury he could be dooming Malavida to a life of paralysis, but he had done a few field triages at accident scenes, both in the Marines and early in his government career when he was in uniform and working Customs sheds at the border. He had pried people off their steering columns and out from under dashboards. He knew that Chacone was in the red zone where survival odds were meaningless. His will to live was the only cord that held him.
As Lockwood lifted him onto the truck bed, he heard something in Malavida's body snap. Lockwood cursed under his breath, then jumped in and pulled Malavida by his shoulders toward the front so his feet were clear. Then he scrambled back and pulled up the tailgate. He saw Karen staring back through the window of the cab, a bloodless look on her face. He grabbed a broken brick which had fallen into the bed of the truck. "Watch out," he yelled. "Turn around and cover your eyes."
She did, and he slammed the brick into the rear glass window of the cab. It shattered, spilling shards onto the seat, but clearing the opening so he could talk to her.
"Let's go. Get moving. I'll stay back here with him."
"How're we gonna find Tampa? That road could lead anywhere."
"I don't know," he said. "Let's go, we'll do the best we can."
Karen Dawson had driven in two NASCAR. stock car races. She was a natural hot shoe with a God-given gift for driving. She slammed her foot down. Mud shot into the air. The truck leaped toward the shell road at the low end of the yard. By the time she got to it she was totally focused, her hands on the wheel at ten past ten. Her vision was searching the road just beyond the headlights, where she could occasionally see the startled eyes of swamp creatures reflected in the yellow light, just before they scurried away to escape the churning tires.
In the back of the truck, Lockwood hung on desperately, trying to support Malavida while they jounced along the uneven road. He managed to remove his jacket and put it under Malavida's head.
They had traveled half a mile when Karen hit the first deep and unavoidable pothole. In the back of the truck, Malavida and Lockwood bounced hard. When he landed, Malavida groaned, opened his eyes, and looked up at Lockwood. He said nothing, but his dark eyes pleaded. Lockwood reached over, found his hand, and grasped it. Malavida held on to it in desperation as the truck rattled and banged down the rain-rutted road.
Karen knew she had to keep the truck from bouncing. A short distance in front of her, the headlights were swallowed by the swamp's hollow darkness. She was trying to spot the potholes in the shell road before she hit them, maneuvering and down-shifting to get around them without losing time. After ten minutes, she came to the first fork in the road. She wasn't sure where she was or even what direction she was heading. She slowed and stopped. "Go right," Lockwood said. But Karen ignored him and jumped out of the cab to look up at the stars. "What're you doing?" he yelled as she scanned the starlit horizon. It was a clear night, and the starscape glittered like pinholes shot through black velvet.
"Goddamn it, he's dying! Let's go, whatta you doing?" Lockwood shouted.
"Looking for the Orion constellation."
"Get the fuck out of here," he said, amazed. "This isn't a Girl Scout camping trip. Get in! Go right!"
Karen spun on him and glowered. "You heard that guy back at the dock. These shell roads could go anywhere. This one's been wandering right and left. I don't even know which way I'm going. I want to go west, that's where Tampa is. Orion is at nearly zero declination. It rises to the southeast. The coordinates on the celestial sphere are analogous to latitude and longitude on the earth." He was looking at her with flat-faced wonder, but she missed the expression because she was again looking up at the sky. "I'll find it for you, and you keep pointing me in the right direction. I won't be able to see it from the cab, it'll be too high overhead." Then she pointed up in the sky. "Okay, see that line of stars? Right there," she continued, "those three little stars? They're called Orion's Belt. The nebula is below them. The kinda reddish one, not as bright, it's called the Jewel of the Sword. You see it?"
He looked up at the sky, trying to find the stars she was pointing at, feeling utterly ridiculous.
"I… I'm not…"
"Find the North Star. It's at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper. You know that one? Go forty-five degrees right and across, the first one you come to."
"Okay… yeah, I guess…"
"That's the Jewel. It's due west. Keep pointing me that way." She jumped back into the cab and turned left on the shell road, heading in the general direction of the nebula.
"Celestial navigation," Lockwood muttered under his breath. "Gimme a fucking break."
Each time they came to a fork in the road, he looked for the constellation, tried to spot the tiny star in Orion's Sword, and then yelled to her which way to go. At least, he finally admitted to himself, it was giving them a consistent course. He hoped they didn't end up in the middle of a Florida swamp. Fifteen minutes later, they hit a paved road with a sign that said TAMPA.
Karen found Interstate 75 and headed north. The first hospital sign they saw was for the University Community Hospital, on South Hillsborough Road.
Karen pulled the truck up to the emergency entrance and Lockwood leapt out of the back. He banged through the double doors and grabbed a trauma nurse in the ER. "I've got a Code Blue out here!" he said, pulling the startled woman toward the truck.
Lockwood and two ER nurses loaded Malavida onto a gurney. There was a moment before they wheeled him inside when Lockwood was looking down at the badly wounded Chicano… then Malavida opened his eyes. "It's on you now, Hoss," Lockwood said softly. "We got you here, now paddle. Catch a ride, we'll be on the beach waiting." Karen moved up and looked down at Malavida. Their eyes held each other. She was still looking at him when they wheeled Malavida inside.
Karen had removed the vehicle registration from the glove compartment. She handed it to Lockwood and he pulled the registration slip out of its yellow, faded plastic holder.
"Leonard Land, Twenty-two Hundred Little Manatee Road, near Tampa," he read. "This guy is going down," he promised softly.
Tampa Detective Grady Raynor had a complexion like lunar lava. His pockmarked face and close-set, steel-gray eyes accurately forecast a cold, uneven personality. He entered the hospital cafeteria with Dr. Susan McCaffrey from the trauma ward. She pointed out Karen Dawson and John Lockwood to him. They were just throwing away coffee cups and moving toward the door. Grady blocked their exit and held up his badge in its leather case.
"Grady Raynor, detective, Tampa Major Crimes. You brought in the Mexican kid who got caught in the explosion?"
"He's not a kid," Karen said.
Lockwood caught her protective tone, but went on, "We called you an hour and a half ago… where you been?"
"You ain't the only clambake on the beach, Buckwheat. Let's go somewhere a little more private."
He led them out into the corridor… Dr. McCaffrey took them down to the Doctors' Lounge and opened the door, but remained outside as they entered.
"Okay, let's have a little ID, folks," Raynor said as soon as they were in the colorless lounge. Karen pulled out her Customs ID and handed it to him.
"Doctor of Criminal Profiling, U. S. Customs. What's that mean, exactly?" he said, his gray eyes crawling over her like sewer bugs.
"What it means, Detective, is I do criminal profiles for U. S. Customs… just like it says."
"And you, Mr. Lockwood… whatta you do?"
"I'm the food critic for the Tampa News."
"This kid you brought in is critical. Somebody blew him open like a can a'corn. Now, you
can stand there and crack wise with me, or you can come to the dance. I don't fuckin' care. Get cute and I'm gonna hang you by your thumbs until you start makin' kissin' sounds. Now this kid has prn art on him. He's done time in somebody's brickhouse. So either I print all a you an' waste a few hours of everybody's time, or you* can bring me up to date now, an' save us all a lotta grief an' pain."
"His name is Carlos `Malavida' Chacone. He's a Federal convict who was released from Lompoc prn to work a case," Lockwood said. "Yeah? How does that work?"
"I'm a SAC with U. S. Customs, retired. It's my case. He was released to my custody."
"Retired? You got a badge? Got any prn paperwork on this kid?" "Left it in the boat out in the swamp."
"You wanna show me where that is?"
Lockwood had seen his share of Grady Raynors. They muscled their way through police work, passing out negative attitude like Halloween candy. They were dick-measurers. Police power was their job perk. Lockwood wanted to go back out to the house in the swamp alone and set up his own crime scene investigation, maybe call in a few Miami lab techs he was friendly with to see what they could pull out of the ashes. The truck might still have trace evidence, but he knew they'd contaminated it by using it to bring Malavida here. The main target, however, was the rusting barge: It was the heart of his investigation. He wanted to do a vacuum-bag and forensic sweep of the inside. He had a hunch that locked freezer wasn't going to be full of TV dinners. The computers in the rusting barge needed to be downloaded. If he got lucky, the whole case could be in there.
Lockwood also knew that he was running out of time. Detective Raynor was two phone calls away from finding out that Malavida was an escaped fugitive with a fresh arrest warrant, and that Lockwood was suspended and working off his badge on a homicide he'd been directly ordered to stay away from. Once Customs was alerted, he'd be swept up like broken glass and that would be it. He didn't want a bunch of local smokies wandering through his crime scene, tracking mud and dropping cigarette butts, but he didn't seem to have much choice. His best bet was to try to co-opt the dial-tone standing in front of him… try to control the investigative fallout as best he could.
Final Victim Page 19